wordsworth

The poet William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) believes that every human being is a sojourner in the mortal world, whereas his real home being heaven. In fact, the poet starts with the major premise that men descend form God. To Wordsworth, God was everywhere manifest in the harmony of nature, and he felt deeply the kinship between nature and the soul of humankind. Man has his soul which knows no decay and destruction. But as one is born, one begins to be confined within the flesh. The soul, bound in his body, can not liberate in his infancy. He trails the clouds of glory, the glory of heaven from which he emanates:
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home."

Of course, as he grows up, he seems to keep away more and more from the radiance of his original home: “Shades of the prison house being to clear Upon the growing Boy..”

Nevertheless, he still visualizes the divine light and luster and that makes him filled with joy.

The poet is quite an old man. He recollects the experiences of his childhood. When he was a child, he was as if a sun smiling in the east. But that he is now bent with age, he seems to be a sun on the wane in the west.Though the poet stands far away from east and looks rather pale, the celestial light of heaven is perceived by him faintly. :
“The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must trail, still in Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid,
Is on his way attended.”
The fact is that to grow in age is to have one’s bond with heaven appears to be one of oblivion – “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.” At this, point the poet refers to a boy of six. Probably he is Heartley, Coleridge’s son. It is in the boy that the poet discovers his own